On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times announced it was ending its two-year-old Outdoors section to cut costs. Editor Dean Baquet said the decision to shelve Outdoors — which he called “one of the most inventive sections in any major newspaper” — was made for purely financial reasons, and would allow the paper to avoid cutting back on local, national and foreign news coverage.
Times reporter Jill Leovy quietly but ominously added this at the end of her story: “There will be further cuts at the Times in coming weeks, Baquet said, but he declined to elaborate.”
Yesterday, the ax fell. The Times announced it will eliminate about 85 newsroom jobs in addition to other positions at the paper, a “decisive action to reflect changes in our business,” according to publisher Jeffrey Johnson. In the Times’ story today, Johnson said the cuts will allow the paper to boost its efforts to increase circulation and advertising, including “making sure we’re connecting with Southern California, betting big online and doing other things to reach new audiences.”
Baquet put on a brave face, saying, “I believe the paper can grow circulation again, and I believe the paper can be as hard-hitting as it ever was.”
We sincerely hope so, and we hope for the sake of journalism that the Times — which has lost circulation despite winning 13 Pulitzers in the past six years — can find some way to maintain the quality of its reporting, even as the newspaper industry’s primary response to the myriad challenges facing it seems to be continued self-incisions.
But for the moment, a full 8 percent of the Times‘ editorial workforce will soon be gone, the second round of cuts since last summer.
And so another one of our great newspapers gets smaller. Again.
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.